A New Role Emerging for the United Nations: an Era of Supralateralism Unfolds While the Remarkable Trinity Evolves Into a Diamond

We are witnessing the early stages of a major transition in the method used by nations to resolve their problems and address their security needs. Increasingly, the United Nations is emerging during this time of transition with an expanded role as the world's preeminent supranational institution. This paper will suggest that the future strategy for global security will be discovered in the dialogue and policy consensus that is developed within the halls of the United Nations. Furthermore, this essay will explore a new and emerging challenge for the United Nations to make a significant contribution to world order, stability and security by moving beyond the roles of peacekeeping, peacemaking and peace enforcement into a new role of planetkeeping. The nation-state appears not only to be losing its control and integrity, but to be the wrong type of international actor to deal with new security demands. Consequently, a nation's foreign policy is frequently grounded in United Nations acceptance and the opinion and support of that institution is changing the traditional interaction of Clausewitz's remarkable Trinity. Each country must realize that it is living within a web of relationships that is irreversibly interdependent. The United Nations must be prepared to serve as the leader of a new global security strategy. It is in a unique position to orchestrate the ways and means that will be necessary to achieve the desired ends of a new international agenda. We need a United Nations that is willing to provide mankind with a sense of security and demonstrate the characteristics of a global statesman.